On Friday evening I was semi-accidentally browsing a Finnish vintage Facebook group that I am a member of. There it was: a woman had posted a photo of a bunch of old fashion magazines, asking someone to come pick them up because they'd end up in paper recycling otherwise. I contacted the woman, begged my nephew for a ride to a nearby suburb, and eventually found myself lugging nearly 50 issues of Vogue, Elle and Marie Claire from the 1990s to our apartment. The woman didn't want any money for her collection of magazines, but I just couldn't take her mags without giving something back so I gave her a pot of thyme. Silly, perhaps, but oh well!I haven't been able to stop browsing the magazines since - the era portrayed in them feels safe and familiar. It was the time when breathtakingly stunning Isabella Rossellini was the face of Lancome, when Kate Moss was dating Johnny Depp, when Claude Montana designed for Lanvin and John Galliano for Givenchy, and ads featured Christy Turlington on one page and Naomi Campbell on the next. Yes, mainstream fashion yada yada yada, probably not all that feminist, blah blah, but boy these magazines are beautiful. I find myself gasping a lot, my heart is skipping beats. I often think that all good fashion has already been designed, produced and photographed. Then I catch myself and reject the nostalgia that I know does not come with objectivity. After all, there is a lot of fashion I enjoy these days as well, a lot of creativity out there that I respect. It is good to face the future, and living in the past is not really an option. Yet... I browse these magazines that show a time when ten million Instagram followers didn't put you on the cover of Vogue, or when emotions or expressions on models' faces weren't photoshopped into oblivion. And I ask myself again: what the hell happened to fashion and when did it happen? When did fashion start changing so fast that it no longer spoke to us on a cerebral level? When did we stop pausing and appreciating a beautiful image, really looking at it, rather than skipping to the next one, because let's face it, there is always a next one? And more than anything: what does all this tell us about our times, our lives? Who knows - maybe I just wasn't made for these times...

4 comments:

Strangely I don't have strong feelings or any nostalgia for 90s fashion. I wonder why. I loved fashion magazines but did not identify or looked for inspiration in the clothes they advertised. They were completely out of my budget and felt like something I shouldn't even aspire to, I think. I really don't know. I remember looking at pictures like you'd look at paintings in a museum--just beautiful, transporting images, with no relevance to my immediate, practical life. But I can't remember anything memorable or that I'd like to revisit. It's possible though that if I did go through some of those magazines like you, I'd make some strong feelings arise.I do love that middle picture you posted! I feel like I have to copy the outfit on the right.

You know, now that I think of it, I never read Vogues in my teens. I only browsed my mother's Finnish fashion magazines, which must have featured the same Lancome ads and celebrity gossip. But the imagery of 1990s fashion feels very nostalgic to me, and I wonder whether it is maybe more because of MTV rather than magazines? I have fond memories of George Michael's supermodel music videos and also, what was that show on MTV that was hosted by... was it Cindy Crawford? I can't remember. Anywhoo, I am rambling incoherently here. :D I guess what I am getting at is that I have very intense sense of nostalgia when it comes to the 1990s imagery, even though at the time, I didn't really even care about fashion all that much. Or maybe I just didn't know that I did, and it was more subconscious? Who knows! :)